Welcome to this special edition of Horticulture Week which celebrates the 175th anniversary of the founding of our forerunner, The Gardeners' Chronicle, with a look back at the history of professional horticulture in the UK.

Highlights from the last 175 years

The first edition of Horticulture Week forerunner The Gardeners' Chronicle was published on 2 January 1841. Here we reproduce the leading article from that edition, setting out the "principal subjects" the journal was intended to embrace.

In July 1851, as the Great Exhibition drew to a close, Joseph Paxton called for his Crystal Palace to become a permanent garden under glass to improve Londoners' health. As part of Horticulture Week's 175th birthday celebrations, we republish Paxton's call from our forerunner, The Gardeners' Chronicle.

On 21 August 1841, Charles Darwin wrote to Horticulture Week forerunner The Gardeners' Chronicle about "the humble-bees which bore holes in flowers" following a reader's complaint about damage to his bean crop. Continuing celebrations of our 175th anniversary, here we republish Darwin's letter

As World War Two drew to a close, The Gardeners' Chronicle made a plea for peace memorials from educational facilities set among trees and flowers to rest gardens or rose gardens to remember those never to return.